Benjamin Wolff

Speaker, musician, and columnist—Benjamin Wolff delights audiences with elegant insights into the way people collaborate and work together. With the classical string quartet as a model, he and his colleagues demonstrate how members of a high-performing team can share leadership to overcome obstacles and achieve their goals.

He writes a regular column on Leadership and Culture for Forbes Online and has delivered programs on teamwork and creativity for Ingram Micro, the Center for Collaborative Organizations, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, the Lean Product and Process Development Exchange, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Williams College, Rockefeller University, and Harvard University.

For eighteen years he was Associate Professor of Music at Hofstra University and a member of the Hofstra String Quartet. An active professional cellist in New York City, he has performed with ensembles such as Early Music New York, the American Classical Orchestra, Concert Royal, and was cello soloist in "Junction" with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

In 1997 he co-founded the Foothills Chamber Music Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. For seven years he led the festival as cellist and co-Artistic Director as it presented a celebrated series of summer performances, lectures and symposia at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art, and the Delta Fine Arts Center.

In addition to The Art of Teams, he is the creator of Galileo's Muse, a program that introduces audiences to the scientist Galileo Galilei's creative problem-solving methodology, and The Box is a Gift, which reveals the value in constraints and inspires us to look at boundaries and limitations as hidden opportunities.

He is past president of the National Speakers Association New York City and was co-chair of the 2018 NSA National Winter Conference. When he is not speaking, writing, or giving concerts, you can find him on a wilderness canoe trip in the Adirondacks or whipping up a batch of delicious homemade pancakes.